Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will return to what Dr. Murphy was saying about the cooling of babies. Is he saying that in the cases of between eight and ten babies a year, the effects of a lack of oxygen at birth, which leads to profound disability for a child over his or her lifetime, can be addressed by putting an ambulance service in place 24 hours a day, seven days a week? If that is the case, and perhaps I am not great on the maths, is it not a no-brainer to suggest that the savings which could be generated from not needing to pour substantial health and medical resources into families, over the lifetimes of the between eight and ten children who would lead normal lives, would immensely outweigh the cost of running an ambulance that is already available? As things stand, it would be a matter of providing out-of-hours staffing for that ambulance. Surely it makes financial and economic sense to proceed along these lines, even if we dismiss the human aspect of the significant quality of life implications for the families, the children and the communities involved.